May 13, 2006
ST. BONIFACE, Manitoba
2006/6

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS BY

FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER AND MINISTER OF THE ATLANTIC

CANADA OPPORTUNITIES AGENCY PETER MACKAY,

AT THE INTRODUCTORY SESSION

OF THE ST. BONIFACE MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE

ON CONFLICT PREVENTION AND HUMAN SECURITY

“NEW CHALLENGES, THE STATE AND

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT”

The period following the Cold War was marked by a series of humanitarian disasters—in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Kosovo—that focused international attention on the issue of protecting civilian populations. Today, with the crisis still raging in Darfur, despite the signing of the peace agreement, there is deep anguish over the vulnerability of civilian populations in increasingly insecure situations.

The death and displacement of civilians remains an active aim of combatants in too many conflicts. This tragic situation is intolerable. The impunity of those responsible for violating human rights and humanitarian law leaves a painful legacy for war-torn societies to manage.

While there is widespread consensus regarding the need to enforce humanitarian standards and protect civilians from the worst threats to their security, we continue to fall short of this goal.

Without a doubt, the most challenging aspect of this issue is deciding what to do in cases of internal conflict, which often pit fundamental principles of sovereignty and non-intervention directly against humanitarian obligations.

Canada promoted the “responsibility to protect,” both to resolve this dilemma and to provide a response model for the international community. The responsibility to protect has now become a universally recognized standard, including by the main body charged with its implementation—the [United Nations] Security Council.

The 2005 UN World Summit forged an international consensus on the responsibility to protect. It acknowledges that each state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It also stipulates that the international community must encourage and assist states in carrying out this responsibility. Most importantly, member states at the Summit formally expressed their willingness to take timely and decisive action, through the Security Council, when peaceful means are inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or other crimes against humanity.  

Just two weeks ago, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1674 on the protection of civilians, affirming the support of the Security Council for the principle of the responsibility to protect.

La Francophonie has good reason to welcome this major step. In 2004, at the Ouagadougou Summit, La Francophonie took the lead in accepting the principle of the responsibility to protect.

We welcome the global consensus that has been reached on these standards. But we also need to put measures in place to implement our commitments. To do this, we must ensure that the international community has the information, the will and the capability to respond effectively to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the prevention and suppression of these crimes, and prosecution of the perpetrators.

Multilateral, and especially cross-regional, organizations such as La Francophonie have an important role to play in strengthening the principle of the responsibility to protect. They can play this role by urging their members to implement this responsibility at the national and international levels.

La Francophonie has a role to play in promoting the state’s responsibility to protect civilians, by insisting that concrete actions be taken at the at the national and international levels in this regard, including building the capacity of states, institutions and international actors to effectively mitigate and address attacks against civilian populations.

La Francophonie should also be able to contribute to an early warning system that would provide the international community with more detailed and timely information on imminent crises.

Canada continues to assert that the principle of the responsibility to protect needs to be incorporated into Security Council norms and practices. For this reason, Canada continues to urge the Security Council to adopt guiding principles to which the Council would refer before authorizing the use of military force, as recommended by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. These principles are: the seriousness of the threat (there must be irreparable harm), right intention (the goal of the intervention must clearly be to avoid human suffering), last resort (all peaceful measures must be proven inadequate), proportional means (any military intervention must be limited to the minimum necessary), and reasonable prospects (the intervention must have a genuine chance of success). We urge La Francophonie to put its full weight behind support for this effort.

The challenge we face is translating our commitments into action. Canada will continue to work diligently at the United Nations and within La Francophonie and other multilateral forums to ensure that the responsibility to protect is not only recognized, but also put into practice. Of course, we will be counting on the support of our francophone partners to achieve this goal.

Thank you.